In our society, we are constantly tempted to buy things. To make money, be useful and consume. ‘Resist and look for 'sense' other than that of capitalism,’ says outdoor external PhD candidate Ben Kuiken. For his dissertation at the Nijmegen School of Management, he made a critical philosophical review of the concept of sense-making.
‘What do you see in this?’ asks Kuiken. He points to a wooden rectangular top standing on four iron legs. ‘A desk, a table, a work of art?’ It is the introduction to organisational philosopher and external PhD candidate Ben Kuiken's research topic: sense-making, or the meaning we give to things. On 8 March, he will defend his thesis 'Making sense of sense-making' at Radboud University. Kuiken: ‘What I found is that our sense-making is never neutral, but says something about the value we attach to things. And unfortunately, in recent decades that sense-making has been strongly dominated by the capitalist system. How can we make as much money as possible? Be of use? Collect ‘likes’ on social media? While there is also a lot of value in things that you can't do anything with, that have no practical use. So let's try to resist the 'sense of the market', as I call it, and make our own sense again.’ Because, Kuiken says, while our current way of sense-making is valuable and useful, it becomes problematic if we think it is true.
Sense-making is both valuable and problematic, you say. What do you mean by that?
‘Sense-making is about giving meaning to reality, to what happens. And around that meaning we organise ourselves. Why? So that we can work together and make agreements with each other about how the world works. In that 'organising', we reduce the plurality of reality, as American social psychologist Karl Weick says. In organisations, this is done with functions, for example. By saying 'You are the manager' or 'You are just an ordinary employee', we are reducing an entire person to one aspect of their identity. This is convenient because it allows us to deal with it, to fill spreadsheets, and to make a job description out of it. But we simultaneously sell people and things short. People and things are not just one thing, and besides, they are constantly changing. Only we find that very difficult because we want to make things graspable and fixed.'